Wednesday, November 08, 2006

That's the whole recipe. Just three ingredients (plus some olive oil), ca 20 minutes and you've got an unusual and flavoursome dish on your plate. I've already blogged about the wonderful mint-infused and very salty white cheese, halloumi, that hails from Cyprus. I first wrote about Paul Hollywood'sCypriot mint and halloumi bread, and more recently about fried halloumi slices with chilli oila laNigella Lawson. Few days ago I came across a tempting recipe at the Finnish Herkkutori website (click on the last recipe link), that stuffed raw red peppers with fried halloumi cubes and served them alongside bean stew. I'm not too fond of raw bell peppers, so I decided to roast them first, and serve them with halloumi as a meal on its own.

Roast the red peppers in 220˚C oven for about 20 minutes, until they soften.About 5 minutes before the peppers are ready, heat the oil in a large non-stick frying pan. Add cheese cubes and cumin and fry, turning cheese cubes to brown evenly, for about 5 minutes.Arrange the peppers on a plate, fill with fried halloumi cubes.Serve with some rocket salad.

UPDATE 16.11.2006: Andrew of Spittoon Extra tried this recipe, too. Check out his post. Mia Maailm was also inspired, and made a similar dish using green peppers and mozzarella, but her post is in Estonian :)

Fabulous. I can see that from all the comments I'm not the only foodie who thinks this sounds fantastic. I've yet to find haloumi here though. But,we are getting a Whole Foods store soon, so there's hope!

Haloumi rocks!! It is one of my favourite cheeses - used it the other day to stuff a chicken breast, together with some chopped sin-dried tomatoes - what a great combination. Your stuffed peppers look like a lovely quick Sunday night supper :-)

Pat - I don't know about substitutes (foodsubs.com suggests feta for a similar flavour and mozzarella for a similar texture, but I don't think I'd try to fry mozzarella myself). Heidi of 101Cookbooks claims that at least in the San Francisco area you should be able to find it in Rainbow, the cheese store at Divisadero and Oak, Whole Foods and also some CostCo stores ( http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/001489.html ). You might also want to check out the Greek/Cypriot/Lebanese/middle-eastern grocery stores, if there's any in the neighbourhood. Hope you'll find it!